


Beautiful

by WerewolvesAreReal



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Character Study, China, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 14:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: Lien would like to return to her egg now.





	

The world is dark and warm and everyone says such kind things.

They say she will be lovely, they say she will be wise and good and strong, one of the strongest dragons in China. They do not know, yet, that she is female. It seems strange that they cannot tell.

Sometimes the voices sing and she tries to sing back. They become silent, expectant, but singing is tiring so then she falls asleep.

They are so, so excited to meet her.

She wants to meet them too, these kind voices with their poetry and gentle words. They say they will feed her and she thinks she knows hunger, the itch in her belly that grows outward, pain gnawing at her stomach and constricting her wings. She just needs to meet them. And she will be so, so beautiful.

She pushes up against the side of the world and it wobbles. The voices are silent.

She scratches the world's surface with wet, soft claws. The voices say nothing.

With one great lunge she bursts through the world, breaking into a brilliant light and blinking her eyes against red, red everywhere. The voices cheer. The voices stop, abruptly, and she crawls out of her egg.

“Hello,” she says

These voices, people, humans, are tall and strange and many-colored. They surround her in a circle but step back when she moves forward. Two small humans hold something that smells very, very intriguing. But they shy away from her.

“It is cursed,” says someone. “Should we kill it?”

No one answers.

She looks around and shakes her wings. She wants to meet the voices. She wants to eat, too, but first there is a question to be asked. “Am I beautiful?” she demands.

A few people look away.

“Well, will you not feed it?” says a boy suddenly. She looks at him. He sounds very familiar.

Two humans, less grand than the rest, stand holding platters of meat and stare at her with round eyes. After a moment they exchange looks and set down the tray.

She steps forward. Bends her head uncertainly.

“I suppose she might not be a Celestial,” someone murmurs, walking away. “With that coloring I should be surprised...”

“But what does it mean?”

The crowd is dispersing fast. She has only eaten a few bites when the grand platform is nearly deserted.

Shards of her beautiful dark world lay on the ground. She nudges a piece; it cannot be remade.

“Come, Yongxing. Perhaps Chu will sire another egg.”

She pauses to watch the boy look away. As a servant nervously edges forward to pour her a bowl of tea, she asks, “Do I have a name?”

The servant startles badly. Tea spills over the ground and slips down long stone steps. “We forgot,” he blurts. “ - Lung Tien Lien. For a girl, they said, your name would be Lung Tien Lien.”

Lien nods once. She returns to her meal in silence.

* * *

 

Lien is given a beautifully appointed Pavilion behind the Imperial Palace. She shares the common space with other Imperials and Celestials. Her home is large, and it is wonderful, and it is lonely.

She is the first go to the pond every day because the other dragons fall silent when she approaches. They do not speak with her, with the exception sometimes of Chu; but the old Celestial mostly shakes his head, and says, “It is a shame.”

She has learned she is not beautiful.

Blood-tinged eyes stare at her from the water when she drinks. Her skin is more pale than the moon, harsh and sickly. She _will_ cause sickness, they say. Her presence is a sign foretelling death and and fear and terrible things. Day after day she sits with palace servants who read her poetry and books of philosophy and do not meet her eyes.

One day she walks back to her Pavilion and sees the boy sitting in the shade. He is studying intently and holds a brush between his fingers. As she watches he spills his ink over the parchment. He curses and looks around, as though for a servant.

“Yongxing,” she calls softly.

The boy startles. He looks up and tenses, face turning hard.

“I have ink in my Pavilion – great jars of it,” she says. “Do you need some?”

After a moment Yongxing inclines his head. He rises.

They walk together to the inside of her Pavilion. She is still growing; the walls are wide and tall. She retrieves the ink with two delicate talons and turns. Yongxing won't take it.

“There is nothing here,” he says. “Just the ink, the parchment, and your brushes.”

Lien looks around. Her home is perfectly clean, and she cannot find a fault with it. “Yes,” she says at last. “Is that wrong?”

Yongxing refills his tiny inkwell. “Thank you, Lung Tien Lien,” he says quietly. Then he exits, still appraising her Pavilion with odd eyes.

* * *

 

Her ruff grows during the Autumn when the lilies bloom. But it is translucent as a cloud, flowing around her face and glowing red where the sun lights up her blood beneath. She is a Celestial, it cannot be denied, and there is no celebration.

On this day Lien looks up to a cloudless sky. She shakes the sleep from her wings and steps out of her Pavilion. The garden grows quiet as she leaps into the air.

Peking is a large city, loud and familiar in feeling if not appearance. She flies overhead and passes it by. Soon the low buildings give way to grass, and rivers, and the low quiet farmlands she has never seen.

The rice-paddies are gathered in tiered pools, curving lines that follow no pattern she can understand. Lien wants to understand, though. It is a blessing for a Celestial to appear to farmers – this is what she has been told – so she spirals down to ask about the layout.

But the farmers vanish within seconds. She spots a hat here, a head peering over the fronds. She finds one man still standing, frozen, and asks him, “Will you tell me about this field?”

He makes a strange sign with his hands. He looks confused. Frightened. “If that is what the Honorable Lung Tien Lien demands,” he says at last.

And then he adds, “Will you take your curse from the field in exchange for this knowledge?”

Lien looks at the farmer.

And something cold twists in her stomach. “No,” she says flatly. The man gapes. Lien decides she does not want to learn stupid things about farming, anyway; at least not from this man. The Imperial library will have better books, and better tutors.

She rises to the sky as the farmers plead and call after her. And she does not feel sorry.

Really.

* * *

 

Her tutor Liu Bo is not unkind.

They meet between two tall pear trees every day. When a few months have passed he is not even afraid, except that after his cousin dies he disappears for three long weeks and only returns clutching a small pouch, wrapped in a red ribbon, which he will not open or discuss.

He is an excellent tutor and he teaches her well, but he also says, “It is no shame if you cannot manage as well as others of your kind. You have been born with a great disadvantage, a great curse.”

He says, “The Empire will not expect your contributions, anyway.”

She makes him teach her about mathematics, literature, history – everything the greatest minds of China know and more. Until at last she asks for a lesson, and he says, “I do not know that I would be best for that task, Lung Tien Lien. But let me refer you to one of my students. He is a good man, and clever, and you will work well together.”

She agrees because Liu Bo has been kind to her. She agrees because she is a curse, and with her consent Liu Bo will not return again.

The next week she arrives and the boy sits between the pear trees. He greets her and says, “My cousins tell me that you are the ghost of the dead Celestials never born. They say you are the ghost of Celestials that will never come. They say you are the death of China.”

And Lung Tien Lien says, “I would like to be a scholar. Will you teach me?”

So Yongxing takes out his brush and he does.

* * *

 

Celestials are exempt from the Imperial Examinations. Among the tens of thousands of scholars in her year, Lung Tien Lien is, of course, the best.

* * *

 

Yongxing begins to visit her outside their lessons. It is a strange thing. He asks questions always. He wants to know her favorite flowers, and when he learns the answer her reappears the next week with a commissioned portrait of a thousand white lilies falling over a pond. It hangs in her Pavilion and Lien sees it every morning.

At the end of the year the gardens empty and he comes again. Dim red lanterns glow in distant corners, gifts and trinkets from companions she has never met. The other dragons are gone. Yongxing steps into her Pavilion and asks why she is not at the festival. It is the New Year; it is a time of celebration.

“And no one will celebrate,” says Lung Tien Lien, “If I am present; you know they will turn away and say I am a curse.”

Yongxing lifts his head and tells her, “I do not see how that is your problem.”

Lien pauses. She taps her claws against the ground.

She accompanies him to the festival. Her prediction was accurate: the people cower and the other dragons turn away, even her Imperial cousins. But Yongxing sits beside her and talks quietly, and Yongxing orders away anyone who dares suggest she should be elsewhere.

Across the great decorated field the Emperor sits, and he watches.

* * *

 

“My father wanted to send you to Morocco,” Yongxing says.

Lien considers this quietly. In Morocco the mourning colors may not be white; in Morocco she would be one dragon among many, and not a scholar, and less than nothing.

And she would not have Yongxing.

“I told him that you could not go,” he says. “I told him you were my companion; I hope I did not presume.”

Lien looks at him. “I am a curse,” she says.

“I will not be Emperor,” is his explanation.

Lien will not insult him by questioning the decision. She lowers her head, silently, and wraps her body around Yongxing.

They sit in that garden-spot between the two pear trees and he is the most beautiful person in the world.

 


End file.
